216 PSYCHOLOGY. 



THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER OBJECTS 



*re either relations to other minds, or to material things. The 

 material things are either the mind's own brain, on the one 

 hand, or anything else, on the other. The relations of a 

 mind to its own brain are of a unique and utterly mysteri- 

 ous sort ; we discussed them in the last two chapters, and 

 can add nothing to that account. 



The mind's relations to other objects than the brain are 

 cognitive and emotional relations exclusively, so far as we 

 know. It knoivs them, and it inwardly ivelcomes or rejects 

 them, but it has no other dealings with them. When it seems 

 to act upon them, it only does so through the intermediary 

 of its own body, so that not it but the body is what acts on 

 them, and the brain must first act upon the body. The 

 same is true when other things seem to act on it — they only 

 act on the body, and through that on its brain.* All that 

 it can do directly is to know other things, misknow or 

 ignore them, and to find that they interest it, in this fashion 

 or in that. 



Now the relation of knoiving is the most mysterious thing 

 in the world. If we ask how one thing can know another 

 we are led into the heart of Erkenntnisstheorie and metaphys- 

 ics. The jDsychologist, for his part, does not consider the 

 matter so curiously as this. Finding a world before him 

 which he cannot but believe that he knows, and setting 

 himself to study his own past thoughts, or someone else's 

 thoughts, of what he believes to be that same world ; he 

 cannot but conclude that those other thoughts know it after 

 their fashion even as he knows it after his. Knowledge be- 

 comes for him an ultimate relation that must be admitted, 

 whether it be explained or not, just like difference or re- 

 semblance, which no one seeks to explain. 



Were our topic Absolute Mind instead of being the con- 

 -crete minds of individuals dwelling in the natural world, 

 we could not tell whether that Mind had the function of 

 knowing or not, as knowing is commonly understood. We 



* I purposely ignore 'clairvoyance' and action upon distant things by 

 'mediums,' as not yet matters of common consent. 



